The self improvement world has taught us that the ‘secret’ to a good life is to be in a perpetual state of expansion, growth and change.
It’s filled our minds with the idea that the more ‘inner work’ we’re doing, the more we’re ‘taking responsibility for ourselves’, the more we are looking to understand the spiritual purpose of whatever it is we’re going through - the better our lives will be.
We’ve been taught in the self help and spirituality worlds that there is always a deeper reason for everything we experience, and that the more we can understand those deeper reasons, the happier and more fulfilled we’re going to be.
We’ve been told that when we are going through hard things, that when we are feeling challenged or overwhelmed, that when life is not going our way and we’re struggling - that the answer is always to figure out the role we are playing in our own suffering, and how we can change in order to fix it.
We’re told that this is what ‘taking responsibility for our lives’ is, and that it’s in this taking responsibility for ourselves that we are going to find the solutions to all of our problems, and we’re going to find the joy that may be missing from our current experience.
And heaven forbid we EVER go into a ‘victim’ mindset, where we feel sorry for ourselves, upset at what’s happening and rather than working to proactively shift or change things, we allow ourselves to feel badly about what’s happening or even consider that we may not be the cause/that we may not have a solution right now.
The idea is that we should never allow ourselves to feel badly, essentially.
The idea with all of the above ideas is that it’s possible to be in a state of happiness, satisfaction and bliss at all times - and if we AREN’T feeling that, that this means we need to be looking into spirituality, self help and self improvement to find that happiness.
The idea is that feeling sad, feeling down, feeling angry, feeling hopeless or anything less than empowered is wrong and means that we’re doing something wrong.
We Don’t Like To Not Feel Good
Now of course it makes total sense that we are going to have resistance to feeling badly.
None of us WANT to feel that we are trapped in situations that don’t feel good.
None of us WANT to feel sad, angry, upset, disempowered or otherwise ‘negative.’
It makes sense that we would want to believe the messages coming from the self help, spirituality and personal growth worlds that are telling us that we can be happy, satisfied and in a state of positivity all the time.
It makes sense that we want to believe that perfect bliss is possible.
It makes perfect sense that we want to believe that this bliss is possible if we just do enough inner work. That if we just control the one thing we think we have control over - ourselves and our mindsets - that this will be enough to create a life where we never have to suffer again.
We want to believe that we have total control over how we feel and what we experience, and that that control comes from an INTERNAL place - because that means we don’t have to face the idea that we may NOT have total control over how we feel.
We want to believe that if we just do enough on the inside, that we can create a life where we never feel anything negative ever again.
So when the self help, spirituality and personal growth world tells us that the power is all within, that it’s our mindsets and our attitudes that make all the difference, that we can manifest and create a perfect life just through perfecting out inner state - we’re primed to believe it.
None of us want to hear that life may be more complex than this.
None of us want to hear that we may not be able to ‘optimize’ ourselves to a point of never experiencing suffering or anything negative ever again.
None of us want to believe that there may be circumstances outside of our control that affect us - and again the spirituality, self help and personal growth worlds are going to swoop in and tell us NO! Don’t believe that there is EVER a situation you can’t self help/improve your way out of! Don’t believe there’s ever a feeling you can’t spiritualize away.
Do the right thing, change yourself, edit your thoughts, say the right prayers, do the right rituals, eat the right foods, have the right morning routine and journal it all away.
You can be in control.
You just have to control yourself.
Recognizing That We Don’t Have Ultimate Control
We have to recognize here that a BIG part of the self help/spirituality/personal growth messages we receive on a regular basis are coming from a childhood/childlike perspective.
As ‘adult’ and ‘empowering’ as some of these messages may appear to be on their surface - in actuality SO much of what we see in the spirituality, self help and personal growth spaces are mindsets rooted in that childhood view of the world that says:
‘If I perfect my behavior, the one thing I have control over (that I believe from my childhood vantage point that I have control over), this will mean everyone around me will love me, understand me and then give me the things I want and need in order to feel good.’
It’s coming from the idea that we all learned deep in our nervous systems when we were children - that our caregivers and other authority figures were our SOURCE for all things, and that it was their approval/disapproval of our behavior that determined if we got our needs met or not.
We all had the experience of not ACTUALLY being in control of what happened to us - of not actually being able to make our pain go away when we were in pain, and not being able to create pleasure for ourselves through understanding how the world around us worked and through being able to use our problem solving skills to get what we wanted and needed.
Rather again, we were dependent upon those around us to understand us, to empathize with us, to love and and care for us - and THIS is how we got our needs met.
Within the context of that, we learned that pleasing them, making them happy and adjusting our behavior in order to get that love and approval was the ONE WAY to have pleasure, to avoid pain and to have safety overall.
We then carried that belief system into our adulthoods.
We carried the idea that pain was a result of us behaving in the wrong way, and that pleasure was a result of pleasing those around us.
We carried the idea that if we are experiencing pain on any level, that this was a sign of us failing in some way, of us behaving in the wrong way, and thus we needed to figure out what we were doing wrong, so that we could change that to try to elicit a different response/reaction from those around us.
If we were not given validation for our feelings, if we were not surrounded by caregivers who were able to see us, who weren’t able to validate our experiences, who weren’t able to help us see where things WEREN’T about us/because of us, if we didn’t have friends or other relationships with people who were able to admit that sometimes the pain we were in was because of THEIR behavior instead of US doing something wrong - the more we would have learned that EVERYTHING that hurts, hurts because of us and the more we would have learned that the only way to feel safe is to be constantly fixing ourselves when we are in pain.
Remember, this was a system of life that we learned in our nervous systems. We learned this before our logical mind was fully developed and on board.
This idea that pain = I am behaving incorrectly and need to fix/change/control myself on some level - is a deep program, and again, it’s one that’s being used by the self help/spirituality/wellness industries to continually sell us on the idea that if we perfect ourselves, everything in our lives will be perfect as well.
We also have to remember that our hyper-individualistic, capitalist culture ALSO sends us this message CONSTANTLY.
We have been indoctrinated into a culture that tells us that no matter what’s happening to us, it’s the result of our choices. It’s the result of what we have done/not done.
There is little to no acknowledgement of the systems we live in, how they are set up, how they advantage some and disadvantage others. There is little to no acknowledgment of the fact that we can be ill, we can have mental health issues, we can be in situations where we aren’t able to provide for ourselves, we can be harmed and hurt in ways that have NOTHING to do with what we have or haven’t done - and because of this again, we are deeply conditioned to believe that all things that we experience are a result of us, and thus if we are suffering, we just need to make different choices.
This means that we never question the systems we live in, and that means that those who are benefiting from the ways our structures are set up to exploit some in order to profit others, are never getting looked at. Are never being questioned.
So long as we believe that all of our pain comes down to our own choices, we can be perpetually sold courses, retreats, memberships, books, sessions and services that promise to rid us of ALL pain. That tell us that life CAN be perfect if we just work on ourselves enough. And no matter how much these products and services fail to deliver, we never question the underlying root message - rather we shame and blame ourselves or we simply move on to the next ‘thing’ to try to fix ourselves.
So long as we believe all of our pain can be solved via controlling ourselves, we never question the systems we have, and thus never become proactive in creating systems that actually work better for more people.
THIS is the root of it.
When we can’t acknowledge that we don’t have total control, when we can’t see where our experiences may be being shaped by something OTHER than our choices, when we aren’t able to be validated in our experience and when we aren’t able to feel our actual feelings so that we can sort through what really IS our responsibility and what isn’t - we will be forever vulnerable to people who are heavily profiting off of selling us a dream that can never come true.
Figuring Out Where Our Power Is
With this, we need to recognize that the first step most of us need to take is to step back from all the self help, spirituality and personal growth, to stop trying to fix, change or alter ourselves, and to START getting to KNOW ourselves.
We need to be given time and space to be validated in our experiences. What WE felt and what WE went through without the filter of what we ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t’ feel, think or be.
We need space to connect with the parts of ourselves we have shame, blame and guilt around, and we need to be given the tools to help us see how these parts are good, how they are allowed, and how we can support them in getting their needs met so that we can express in an authentic way.
We need space and time to process through the coping, numbing and self-sabotaging habits we have, to see how they are helping us, why we developed them, how we believe they are keeping us safe and how we can again, start to process how we were harmed in the past that led us to needing these methods and how we can figure out what’s happening in the present that is still leading us to need these things. Then we can start to figure out what we ACTUALLY want and need, and how we can get those needs met in real reality.
We need space to feel our feelings, to have our feelings validated and to be allowed to be upset so we can figure out what is ACTUALLY hurting us, if it’s not that we are weak/lazy/wrong/bad/broken - and then from THERE we can start to find real and true steps towards happiness and problem solving.
Acknowledging that we don’t have total control, knowing that we need space and time to be validated and seen in what we are feeling and what we went through, being given the space to reconnect with all parts of ourselves that we have been trained to see as wrong and bad - THIS is the actual path of liberation.
Then we can discern where our power is to make our lives TRULY better, and where we have to learn to support ourselves the best we can within the circumstances we aren’t in control of.
Then we can learn that pain is always going to be a part of human life. It’s not something we ever fully transcend or get rid of, but rather is something we learn to support ourselves THROUGH.
Then we can again, start to express in more authentic ways.
Then we can figure out what our needs are and how to meet them in real reality, not the reality that says ‘if I perfect myself enough the world/others will respond to me differently and that will be the solution to all of my pain.’
We will come into our adult perspective and this is what will set us on a path of healing.
Not perfection.
Not transcendence.
Not a path where we never have pain again, never struggle again and never have negative emotions again. Not a path where we fully transcend all negative patterns or even ‘get rid of’ all coping, numbing and self sabotage.
But a path of BETTER. A path of STEPS. A path of transformation and finding our power over TIME.
A path where we can embrace our WHOLE humanity and learn to have peace with that - the good, the bad and the ugly.
THIS is what we actually need.
This is the path of self love.
This is the path of actual liberation.
<3
Want more tools like this?
Check out The Mystery School Here
